Three authors yesterday launched a literary prize to find the best new book at conjuring up the magic of places - and proved how huge the field is by naming their favourite titles from the past.

The novelist Beryl Bainbridge nominated Brick Lane, Monica Ali's new novel about the east London street. The biographer Michael Holroyd picked Thomas Hardy's Wessex novels and Patrick Hamilton's stories about west London. The philanthropist and writer Christopher Ondaatje opted for Richard Burton's 19th-century Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.

They were launching the Royal Society of Literature's £10,000 Ondaatje prize. This will go to "the book of the highest literary merit - fiction or non fiction - that evokes the spirit of a place".

The organisers said the power to evoke this was one of the best-loved features of English literature. The award replaces the royal society's Winifred Holtby prize for fiction of a regional character. Books published this year can be entered for the prize between September 1 and December 1.